Joe vs His Girlfriend vs The Punisher.

Joe and I were in the living room, watching The Daily Show mercilessly rip apart the Moumbai terrorists. He would flick the remote at the DVR and fast forward the commercials. He was cuddled up on the couch, under a quilt. I was in my pajamas, slippers and robe, relaxing in the recliner.

"So, what movie did you and Mary go see today?" I asked him. I knew that he was excited to see "Quantum of Solace" and since I dug the movie, I wanted to see what he thought of it.

"Four Christmases," he said.

"Wait! What? What did you say?" I asked.

"We saw Four Christmases." he paused the fast-forwarding and looked over at me.

"Why? That movie looks like shit. The AICN reviewer said that he sincerely hopes that it kills the shitty, formulaic holiday movie genre entirely. Contrived plotlines. Broad, pointless characters. People doing and saying stupid things. Why would you go see that?" I was stunned. It was like Joe had casually said that he ate a fresh dog turd today.

"Mary wanted to see it," he said.

"Well, why didn't you try to talk her out of it. Arguably, helping her avoid that movie would've been an act of love." Clearly, I wasn't able to let this go.

"Mary wanted to see a holiday movie and that's the only one that's out now. So, we went to go see it. We were supposed to see two movies. Quantum of Solace early in the day and then Four Christmases in the afternoon. But we ended up sleeping in and missed the first movie and only saw Four Christmases. It wasn't that bad."

"Don't defend that piece of shit," I said. I helpfully added, "You better get some sort of extra sex acts for suffering through that movie. Extra Blowjobs. Or Better Blowjobs or something."

"Better than that, I got her to agree to see Punisher; War Zone with me when it opens."

"Dude, Punisher; War Zone is going to be ultra-violent. People's heads blow up. The Punisher kills people with furniture. Apparently, there's going to be a massive body count in that movie."

"I know that. And you know that. But she doesn't know that."

"Ah ha. I see," I said. " I understand now. For a second there, I thought you got the crap-end of that deal. I was almost going to feel sorry for you. But not now..."

Joe unpaused The Daily Show and we finished watching it together.

Cheers,
Mr.B